There are many types of document-handing machines, such as facsimile machines, available commercially. These machines handle stacks of documents, from which one document at a time is fed into the machine for processing. Most commonly, the documents are fed one at a time from the top of the stack; however, the present invention permits the feeding of documents, one at a time, from the bottom of the stack, and this permits documents to be added to a stack while the machine is operating, without disturbing the operation. Those presently known machines which permit feeding from the bottom of a stack of documents have separate feeding and separating stations which the machine of the invention does not have.